Il Segreto
by Icepen
Summary: And just like that, the dam that he had built up to hold his emotions back snapped and salty tears fell freely down his cheeks. But this time it was different. This time there was a shoulder to cry on and arms that wrapped around him and a voice telling him that he would be is time, he wasn't alone. Warning: Major Angst.


_A/N: Hello, beautiful people I'm sorry, I know I've been gone forever, but hey, what can I say? Sometimes, life gets in the way of things. But that is beyond the point. I hope this story makes up for my absence. The idea is from this fan picture that I saw, I'm not sure who it was by, but I love that idea, so I decided to try my hand at it. Also, this word count reached 2,659, so who knew, a picture is literally worth a thousand words. Also, People just need more Nico in their lives. _

_On a darker note, yes, there is a reason that I wrote this. When I was still getting over the shock when Nico came out, I was talking to a friend who had also just read the series, and they were like "I can't believe Nico is gay. I used to think he was cool, but not anymore." And I, having fallen in love with the character way back in the Titian's Curse, was even more shocked. So then I hopped online, and I saw a bunch of people saying the same thing. And I couldn't believe it. Now, I realize that this is a character, so it isn't a big deal, but this made me realize that this happens to real gay people everywhere, and that is not okay. We can't turn our backs on people just because of who they fall in love with. All that really matters is that everyone is in a loving and healthy relationship._

_Anyway, read and enjoy!_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson_

* * *

Nico didn't care that curfew had been two hours ago.

He stood by the railing of the _Argo II_ with the chilly night air whipping through his dark hair, stinging his eyes, and sending shivers down his spine despite the weak protection of a torn leather jacket.

Below decks, he could sense five demigods shifting in and out of uneasy slumbers. Even Festus was resting—his ruby eyes weren't glowing, which was as close to resting as the ship's security system ever got.

The demigod above deck, however, was far from tired as he tried to pretend that the tears that stung his eyes were caused by the wind in his face and not the terrible humiliation that he had suffered at the hands of a certain love god.

It wasn't anybody's business that he had a crush on Percy Jackson. It wasn't anybody's business that he was – no he couldn't. Not yet. He couldn't even think it. Even though he was living ninety years after concentration camps had been destroyed, he was still terrified that someone could hurt him because he was—no. He still couldn't think it.

With a detached sort of disgust he noted that his hands were still shaking, just as they had been nearly twelve hours ago. So, not only was he abnormal, he was a coward as well. He hastily stuffed his tell-tale hands into his pockets—out of sight, out of mind, right?

Besides, what was his mind doing worrying about a romantic relationship that would never be possible? He was a demigod at war. A son of Hades. He was a king for crying out loud!

And he had promised to lead five completely unprepared people into a temple to his father that quite possibly would get them all killed to save the boy that was the root of his issues in the first place.

In all honesty, his life felt like a huge cosmic joke for the gods to laugh at. Or maybe the fates wanted to test him until they found his breaking point.

_You're close, keep trying. _ He wanted to tell them. He wanted to slap them all for putting him through so much—always, always expecting more.

Instead, he stood on the deck of a ship in front of all the gods, trying his very hardest to serve them- and the world, all the while questioning why the hell he tried to help the world when the only thing it had ever done for him was give him trouble.

"Nico? What are you doing up? I thought you had gone down ages ago." A familiar voice cut through his musings like a _spatha._

The boy in question jumped at the sound of his half-sister's drawl.

"Hazel! _Zeu alloi theoi_ you scared me."

Hazel, however, was less than impressed.

Nico looked at his sister's frown sheepishly. He had lied about four hours ago when he had said he was going to bed. He had hidden himself in the shadows of the main mast, refusing to go to Percy's room.

Not after what happened.

There was too much of Percy in that room for him to be comfortable anyway. From the blue walls to the discarded dirty clothes strewn haphazardly across the floor to the picture of Annabeth laughing as Percy kissed her on the cheek framed on the bedside table.

Hazel gently cleared her throat, waiting for an answer.

"I—I couldn't sleep."

They both knew that it was a flimsy excuse.

"What's wrong?" Hazel asked.

Nico couldn't bring himself to tell her. He couldn't bear it if Hazel looked at him with the same distaste that he saw in the mirror every day.

"I could ask _you _that. You must be freezing." The dismissal in his voice was supposed to make zombies run for their graves, but somehow his innocent little sister was unfazed.

Hazel just rolled her eyes, establishing herself as the only person in this world who was allowed to do that. "I lived in Alaska. Before heaters were invented. I think I'm good." She gave a little laugh when she noticed the pink on the end of Nico's nose. "By the looks of it, you're the one that's freezing."

She stepped closer to him, and wrapped her arm around his shoulders to keep him warm. Nico felt himself relax in her embrace, but he quickly corrected himself. Anyone he got close to got hurt in some way, and that wasn't going to happen. He was not going to lose another sister.

He stepped away and gently moved her arm off of his shoulders as if it was no big deal. As if the hurt that flashed in her eyes didn't crush his heart.

"Alright then, Miss Eskimo," he playfully poked her ticklish ribs, trying to distract her from the fact that he rejected her hug. "What are you doing up so late?"

Hazel blushed and shifted shyly. "I needed some air. This ship thing doesn't really work for me."

Nico stared at her like she had grown an extra head. In a world where his thirteen year old sister was battling monsters on a nearly day to day basis and his long-time crush was in a manifestation of hell, he had a hard time understanding little problems like sea-sickness.

"What?" She demanded, blushing. "It's still not as bad as Percy on that plane in Canada."

Hazel meant well, but Nico felt like he had been kicked in the gut.

Everywhere he turned, there was Percy Jackson doing heroic things that were tempered with how—how infuriatingly adorable he could get.

"H-how bad was he in Canada?" Nico asked, trying his very best to calm his rapidly beating heart. The effect that the name could have!

Nico turned his head slightly so Hazel couldn't see his expression, knowing that he looked like one of those pathetic love-struck teenagers in a stupid romantic movie. Hazel didn't notice as she laughed and launched into an amusing account of how the all-powerful, once- invincible heroic son of Poseidon was beyond terrified of flying.

"He kept squeaking when we hit turbulence." Hazel giggled, but it was tinged with sadness.

She chewed on her bottom lip and stared at the stars in the distance. Her eyes clouded over with a worry that Nico knew nobody was supposed to see.

She sighed and ran a hand through her untamed curls.

"They're not dead, I know that. But it still feels like we're still playing a game of how much longer. The both of them put together must have a lot of enemies down there, and they're so far away from home, but I can tell that it kill Percy to leave home for so long, and if it was that bad in Alaska, I can't imagine—"she broke off and dabbed away some tears, unable to think of some of her best friends trapped in in Tartarus so soon after her brother came back.

"And Annabeth! I can't not see her again. She's such a good friend and I never told her that. She had started to teach me things that I could never have learned as… well as me in the forties and I never told her how much I appreciated it."

She was tapping her leg with all the pent up nervous energy that had been piling on over the course of the quest.

"Hazel," Nico said trying to get his near-hysterical sister's attention. "Hazel, they're going to come back." Even as he said it, Nico heard the waver of doubt in his voice. "They are this century's most powerful demigods of this century by themselves, but together they are unstoppable."

Hazel finally looked at him, and the single tear rolling down her cheek rolled down her cheek killed him.

Wordlessly, he pulled a black handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and offered it to her. Something akin to amusement flashed in her eyes.

"Not a word," he growled half-heartedly, as Hazel dried her tears. "Come on. Crow's nest. We can keep watch while we talk."

The two of them scurried up the main mast; Nico's weakened body screaming in protest. So maybe he wasn't as healthy as he pretended he was for the others' sakes.

The two children of the underworld settled on the floor of the highest observation deck, the older one trying to hide the fact that he was out of breath.

"Nico, are you alright? You've been acting strange since you got back from Dalmatia."

"I'll be fine. I guess I'm worried about Percy and Annabeth. Same as everyone else." It wasn't a complete lie, but it wasn't the truth either.

No matter how much he wanted to, he could never tell Hazel the truth. She would hate him that was for sure. And he couldn't take that. He finally had something akin to family to take care of, and he would not lose that.

"Tell me about it," Hazel said.

Nico looked at her skeptically, but she met his gaze evenly, any traces of the scared little girl from before were gone. In her place sat a trained Roman soldier who wanted to take care of her big brother.

"I've seen it, Hazel. I've breathed the air. I've almost been destroyed by that place—and I did it voluntarily. They weren't prepared. Annabeth's injured, and Riptide is the only weapon between them."

He took a shuddering breath before he went on. "I want to believe that they'll come back, I really do, but I've felt what that place can do to demigods, and I don't want to give myself false hope."

Another deep breath, to get some of the weight off of his chest. "I know that they have a lot of enemies down there— Hades, I helped put most of them there, and I know that sooner or later, Annabeth's ankle is going to wear down, and Percy is going to get hungry and they're in monster territory now. It would be so easy for Kronos or Hyperion or Zeus knows who else to trick them and kill them. Percy made me promise to meet him on the other side, but now I realize that he could die before I told him that I lo—"

Nico froze in the middle of his word, as what he had done just hit him. His eyes widened and he clamped a hand over his mouth.

How could he have been so stupid? How could he have let something like that slip? What was he thinking? Hazel had been such a good listener; he couldn't help but tell her what was on his mind. He wanted to slip away into the shadows, before he realized that Hazel probably had some amount of control over the darkness anyway.

Perfect. He was stuck in an enclosed space with a person that thought he was a freak. A very powerful someone. Someone he couldn't bring himself to fight, even in self-defense.

Hazel would hate him now. She would tell the rest of the crew and it would be bye-bye Nico the freak. He needed to get away, but he still couldn't out run Hazel. He was still too weak.

His breath began to come faster, and suddenly he was very light headed.

"You have feelings for Percy?" Hazel asked, and Nico couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye.

Nico nodded, burying his head in his hands. He braced himself for a barrage of hate headed his way.

Twice in one day. He told someone his secret, twice in one day. He was lucky Jason was kind. He wouldn't be so lucky the second time. Jason was kind. The fates were not. He might as well start packing his bags.

"That's actually really understandable. Percy is kind of cute," Hazel said sagely.

"I didn't want to have feelings for him, it just happened!" Nico exclaimed desperately trying to set up his case before Hazel went to Frank who could throw him overboard with one arm. "He rescued me from this manticore, and he tried to be my friend even when I was being an impossible brat, and he respected me as an equal in training even when he had two quests of experience on me and he's a great guy, he's got this sense of humor that could make you laugh anytime-."

He broke off when Hazel's words registered in his panicking ADHD brain. "Wait, what did you say?"

"I said I get it. Percy is kind of cute," Hazel said patiently.

"So you don't… you don't hate me? You don't think I'm a freak?" He stammered, feeling smaller that he had felt in a long time.

Hazel put a hand on Nico's shoulder, and this time, he didn't pull away. "Nico, I love you. You're still my brother." She pulled him into a quick hug.

"And you're no more of a freak than the rest of us."

He waited, eyebrows raised for her to reason that out.

"Ok. Six examples," Hazel rolled her eyes, as if everyone's freakishness was the most obvious things in the world. "Our 'Supreme commander' _accidentally_ lights himself on fire whenever he's excited. The ranking official flies around and electrocutes people with his bare hands. My boyfriend 'iguanas' himself out of Chinese handcuffs. The 'responsible adult' is half goat and runs around with a baseball bat singing poke… pocket… some silly game's theme song. My best friend could make you slap yourself repeatedly by asking nicely.

"And me? After a long day of manipulating people's minds to believe what I want them to believe, I like to go to my cabin, feed my super-sonic horse the gold that I conjure, and draw with some colored pencils that a Roman god gave me for a thirteenth birthday that wasn't even in this century."

Even the stoic Ghost King couldn't suppress a snort at that.

"You can trust me when I say this, you having a crush on someone is by far the most normal thing since I came back to life."

Nico didn't know what to think of Hazel's tirade.

One part of him was grateful that she didn't hate him. He was relieved that she knew his secret. But the other part of him, the part that came from growing up in Fascist Italy questioned whether it was fair to Hazel to tell her a secret that she would get in trouble for knowing.

He tried to convince himself that that the world was different now, that he didn't have to hide and fear that people would try to hurt him because he was different.

He tried, but the fears instilled in him since he was very young could not be overcome by reason and a new century.

Hazel's gaze was still tender and understanding and Nico wondered whether anything after this could change that. Bianca taught him that a sibling's love was unending. Hazel, apparently, was creating a corollary to that rule. A sibling's love was unconditional.

But what was he doing? He couldn't get Hazel in trouble. She knew his secret. What if someone- _dio _no. What had he brought upon his sister?

"I'm sorry! I shouldn't have told you. You could get hurt because of me. Gods, I'm so stupid I wasn't even thinking! Hazel, I'm so—"

"Scared," She cut him off. "C'mere, you're gonna be okay." She pulled him into a tight embrace that he couldn't get out of, even if he tried.

And just like that, the dam that he had built up to hold his emotions back snapped and salty tears fell freely down his cheeks, and he reflected vaguely that he hadn't cried this hard since Bianca died.

But this time it was different. This time there was a shoulder to cry on and arms that wrapped around him and a voice telling him that he would be okay.

This time, he wasn't alone.

* * *

_So, tell me what you think in the review box below!_


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